Box 8K Loss of habitat structures in open plains and semi-open mixed landscapes, Sweden

Besides forest landscapes, like the northern taiga, there are two main types of agricultural landscapes in Sweden: semi-open, mixed landscapes and 'open plains'.

The semi-open, mixed landscape of southeastern and central Sweden contains medium-scale fields of great variety which exist only in a belt along the forested landscape. Here, agricultural landuse includes animal husbandry, a wide variety of crops and some ecological farming. This has resulted in a small-scale mosaic of semi-natural habitats such as grasslands, meadows, pastures, wetlands and deciduous woodlands, connected by hedges, stone walls or creeks. There are some similarities with the scenery of the bocage landscape elsewhere in Europe, but the trend in the development is the opposite. Due to changing economic conditions the open cultivated lands are decreasing. From 1944 to 1988 this decrease amounted to about 10 per cent in southern semi-open mixed landscapes (Statistics Sweden, 1988). Marginalisation of agriculture continues unabated; many small farms are being abandoned, becoming overgrown, transforming the mixed semi-open landscape into one which is closed.

In the 'open plains' of southwestern parts of Sweden large agricultural fields dominate the flat or gently undulating landscape. There are only small plots of woodland and trees around the scattered farms. It is a productive landscape, where intensification of agriculture is the main trend. Here the scenery is becoming more and more open. Map 8.5 illustrates the process of fragmentation and decline of grasslands in open-plain landscapes as a result of changing landuse patterns through specialisation, intensification and increasing use of fertilisers. Intensification and marginalisation are both reducing the landscape heterogeneity and the diversity of biotopes and have negative effects on cultural landscape and wildlife. The remaining grasslands become fragmented. In the open plains most grasslands have been ploughed and the remaining ones fertilised, whereas in the semi-open, mixed landscape they have been overgrown by trees and bushes or planted with coniferous trees (Ihse, in press). Grassland species have decreased from 50 per cent to 10 per cent while mesophile and weed species have increased from 10 per cent to 50 per cent. Today, nearly 300 of the 700 species of flora and fauna in the agricultural landscape of Sweden are considered to be nationally threatened (Ingelög et al, in press). Drainage has caused a loss of 67 per cent of wetlands and ponds during the last 50 years, while the disappearance of ecologically valuable linear elements (rows of trees and hedges) affects the overall mobility of species because of larger distances between increasingly isolated habitats.


Map 8.5 - Landscape changes from 1939 to 1985 in the 'open plain', Beden, southern Sweden

Source: Ihse (in press)